Rotary valves are generally used in process industries for directing fluids from one or more sources to one or more destinations in a repeatable or cyclic process. For example, CO2 based chromatography systems or UHPLC systems can generally utilize rotary shear valves which include a rotor and a stator as the two interacting sealing surfaces to alter the flow path directions of mobile phase constituents (e.g., solvents, modifiers, and the like) within the valve. Current high pressure chromatography shear valves typically employ a stator comprising a metallic element and a rotor device composed of a polymer material that forms a fluid-tight seal at a rotor/stator interface. While this combination has been found useful, it can be limited in pressure rating and/or valve lifetime.
Rotor materials can include high strength and solvent resistant polymers, such as polyether ether ketone (PEEK) or polyimide. However, both PEEK and polyimide have compressive strength limitations that can prevent the valve from safely operating above 20,000 psi. To increase the operating conditions of the valve beyond 20,000 psi, higher strength materials, such as stainless steels, have been considered. In particular, stainless steels have a significantly higher modulus than polymers, e.g., approximately 28 million psi versus approximately 2 million psi. However, the higher modulus can make it more difficult to achieve uniform contact stresses for the sealing surface between the rotor and stator. In particular, uniform contact stresses are important to allow for uniform wear and to seal the fluidic paths.